State of Grace

by Sandra Moran

  The third rule was that when reading—especially reading aloud—it was necessary to always reorient one’s self by rereading the last page of the chapter or section. That would, according to my mother, “get your mind back where it needed to be.” And so that’s where we would start, slightly before where we left off the previous day. My mother would open the oversized paperback book and begin to read. She read clearly, with inflection, but made no attempt to distinguish between the voices of the characters. I would watch her finger as it moved beneath the words and breathe in the sweet, earthy scent of pipe tobacco that perfumed all books purchased from the joint bookstore and smoke shop. It was the safest I had ever felt in my life and probably why even today, when I am upset or scared, I turn to a book.

  But somehow, after talking to Natalie about the drawings, the idea of sitting and quietly reading was unappealing. I ran my fingers over the spines of my Nancy Drew books. What, I wondered, would Nancy Drew do? She and Bess and George would expose Don Wan, who would move out of town. And then, they would fix things so my mother would stop worrying. But I knew I wasn’t Nancy, and Natalie and Grace weren’t George and Bess. We were girls and we had no power. We were girls who were kept at home where there was nothing to do. I didn’t want to go to Grandma’s. I didn’t want to read. I didn’t want to dig a hole to China. Or, I began to wonder . . . did I? If I had to be miserable . . . maybe she should be, too. She had said that morning she didn’t care what I did. She had, in fact, suggested digging a hole to China. I grinned at the thought. It was perfect. I would get my way without breaking rules. I would dig a hole to China—a big hole.

  I opened my bedroom door and stepped out into the cool air of the hallway. “I’m going outside,” I yelled as I pushed open the storm door, hopped off the side of the front porch, and made my way to the detached garage. Inside, in the back corner with the gardening tools, was the shovel my mother used to plant trees she pulled up from along the banks of Brush Creek and replanted in our yard. I hefted it over my shoulder and headed out of the garage in the direction of the fence separating our yard from that of Mr. and Mrs. Spencer. Of the two sets of neighbors (my grandparents on one side and Buck and Edith Spencer on the other) my mother preferred the Spencers, for no other reason than she detested her in-laws.

  Building on the lot next to them hadn’t been my mother’s idea. Having grown up in “the country,” living in a town—even one as small as Edenbridge—made her feel claustrophobic. She wanted the space and freedom that came with acreage. My father was agreeable to the idea until his parents, who had a corner lot in Edenbridge and owned the land on both sides of them, offered to “sell” one of the lots to him for a dollar. Always eager for a bargain, my father jumped at the deal, signed the paperwork, and commissioned the builder—all without consulting my mother who, when she found out about the deal, was furious. It was just one skirmish in their long-standing battle of wills that always seemed to have something to do with my grandparents.

  My mother resented my father’s parents for a variety of reasons, most of them centered on what she saw as their “interference” in our lives. As proof, she would point emphatically at the backyard and the zoysia grass that was slowly overtaking the fescue she had used to seed the lawn just after the house was built. It was an old argument that was replayed every spring and summer.

  “That goddamned grass,” my mother would announce as she stomped into the house after mowing the backyard. “Have you seen it? I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what you were thinking when you let them convince you to plant it.”

  “They said zoysia didn’t have chiggers,” my father would mutter. “I thought it would be good for the girls to be able to play and not get bit.”

  It was at this point that my mother would throw up her hands in frustration.

  “All grass has chiggers, John,” she’d say. “It’s grass. It’s in its nature to have bugs. Besides, it wasn’t about chiggers. It was just another one of their attempts to control us. It’s just like that stupid truck.”

  Mention of “the truck” always made my father wince. It was a story that had become legend in our family. It had been a Saturday afternoon less than a year into my parents’ marriage. My mother and her sister, Glenda, had driven into Winston to see a movie and because my mother had just washed her black 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible, my aunt drove.

  “I loved that car,” my mother would sigh each time she retold the story. “It was my first car and it was so pretty.”

  Having heard the story so many times, I almost feel as if I had been there for what happened when my mother and aunt returned home and saw the dented, white pickup truck parked in the spot previously occupied by the convertible.

  In my imagination, my mother storms into the house calling my father’s name.

  “Where is my car?” she asks when she finds him. Her voice is anxious and panicky.

  My father, I can imagine, looks up from whatever he is doing. When they were first married, he was rail-thin with a dark flattop, thick black glasses, and big ears. In my mind, he is fixing something or tinkering with a radio or something. I imagine him poised with a screwdriver in his hand and a cigarette smoldering in a nearby ashtray. Buying time, he picks up the cigarette, takes a drag and looks at my mother.

  “I traded it,” he says through the smoky exhale. “Dad heard about this good deal down at the station and—”

  “You traded it,” she interrupts tightly, a statement rather than a question. “For what? And don’t tell me it’s that battered truck outside.”

  My father shrugs, trying to appear calm, but also knowing that the arguments he crafted in his head all the way back from my grandfather’s service station, would only dig him deeper into the hole he had created.

  “We needed a truck,” he says.

  My mother stares, angry, disbelieving.

  “We needed a truck?” she repeats. “Really. We did? John, that was my car. My car. You had no right to trade it without my permission. If we needed a truck so badly, why didn’t you trade your car for it?”

  “I thought you could drive my car,” he says. “I’ll drive the truck.”

  I can only imagine my aunt taking in this discussion, her eyes darting back and forth as she watches this verbal tennis match.

  “John, I don’t want to drive your car,” my mother says acidly. “I want to drive my car—the car I brought to this marriage. I want to drive the car you traded without my permission and the car you’re going to go get back. If you want that stupid truck so badly, trade your own damn car.”

  My father shakes his head.

  “I can’t,” he says and jumps up to come around the table and stand in front of my mother. “It’s done. But I’ve got good news. I got $100 on top of the trade. We can buy that new vacuum you want.”

  Later my mother would say, “I should have known then that this marriage was going to end in divorce.” And it did. But that would come years later after many unresolved arguments.

  One of the things my sister and I had to be careful of when we played outside was not to get on the nerves of Mr. and Mrs. Spencer. My mother insisted they were nice people, just old and, because they never had children, unused to the noise and chaos. My sister and I knew better, though, having more than once been on the receiving end of Mrs. Spencer click-clacking down the back steps onto their patio to tell us to quiet down because she was “having one of her spells” and we were making it worse.

  “She’s just nasty and mean,” I complained to Natalie one morning at recess.

  She shook her head. “Actually, it’s because of her vapors. I heard Mom talking to someone on the phone about it. Probably your mom.”

  I frowned. “What are vapors?”

  “I looked it up in the dictionary. It means she’s not right in the head. Mom said it’s because of what happened during the war.”

  “The war?” I shook my head. “What war?”

  “World War II, dummy,” Natalie said. �
�Someone broke into her house while Mr. Spencer was away at the war. It made her mean.”

  As was often the case with Natalie’s eavesdropping, she only got part of the story correct. She was right in that Buck had been stationed in Italy during the war. And Edith, who was a schoolteacher, had indeed stayed by herself on the farm. But what happened the night a man broke in while she was asleep remained a bit of a mystery—mostly because Edith never shared what happened. What people pieced together after the fact was this: One night while Edith was asleep, a man snuck into the house. Even now no one locks their doors at night, so it is likely he simply slipped in through the front door. Whether he was there to steal something or to take advantage of the fact she was alone in the house, is unclear. In either case, the next day she showed up in Edenbridge in Buck’s battered old Chevy with two suitcases in the bed. Her eye was blackened, her lip split, and her jaw bruised and swollen.

  “I won’t be staying at the farmhouse anymore,” she said when asked. “I’ll be living with my parents until Buck gets back and then we’ll figure out what to do.” That was all she said on the matter, though the fact that she refused to contact the sheriff confirmed for many that what happened was too painful and embarrassing to admit. The external wounds soon healed, but the same couldn’t be said for the emotional damage. What happened that night made Mrs. Spencer ill-tempered and suspicious. Even though she continued to teach, she no longer was active in the community, preferring to go straight to her parents’ home after school.

  The hope was that things would be better when Buck returned from the war. But, if anything, the exact opposite was true. Instead of returning to the farmhouse, they sold it to Buck’s brother and bought the lot next door to the house that would one day belong to my parents.

  “It was ‘that night,’” people said with a sad shake of their heads whenever Edith Spencer’s name came up. “It made her scared of her own self.”

  It also made her paranoid. Nothing happened in the vicinity of Edith Spencer’s house that went unnoticed. She spent much of her time looking out the windows. Everything that happened was noted in her spidery handwriting complete with date, time, and the manner of the event. When she died, dozens of boxes of notebooks were found, labeled by date and year. Infractions ranging from barking dogs and suspicious cars to detailed accounts of the activities of her next-door neighbor’s rambunctious children were noted.

  I’m sure one of the events she detailed in her notebook was the conversation we had the day I decided to make myself so much of a nuisance that my mother released me from house arrest. I was determining where to start digging random holes in the space between our garage and the fence that separated our lot from the Spencers’. I could hear Mrs. Spencer working in her backyard garden and whistled to let her know I was there.

  “Nancy, is that you?” she called over the fence. “Nancy? John?”

  “It’s me, Mrs. Spencer,” I said. My mother was adamant that my sister and I call any grown-up Mr. X or Mrs. Y until they gave us permission to use their first names. Mrs. Spencer never gave that permission.

  I heard a soft grunt from behind the fence and knew she was climbing onto the stone bench so she could look over. Within seconds, her pale, wrinkled face appeared over the top of the wooden slats. She studied me for a moment and then frowned. “What are you doing with that shovel, Birdie?”

  I looked up at her, unsure about how to answer. “What do you mean?” I could hear the defensiveness in my tone and cringed when she gave me one of her meanest “don’t you sass me” teacher looks in response.

  “You’re holding a shovel and you look like you’re going to dig something up,” she said. “That is what one usually does with a shovel.”

  I hesitated and searched my mind for what I could say that wouldn’t cause her to call my mother and tell her what I was up to. “I’m . . .” I looked down at the shovel. “I am going to dig a hole . . . for my hamster . . . Darwin. He died. Heart attack. He was eating his Hartz pellets . . . you know, the green ones, and he was stuffing them in his pouches and I guess he got one lodged in his throat because he began to cough. And then a big chunk of green food flew out and then he sort of just grabbed his chest and died. It was really sad.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That makes no sense.” She studied me for several seconds before shaking her head and disappearing behind the fence. I assumed she had returned to her gardening, but after a few moments, I heard her voice again. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “He was very special.” When she didn’t reply, I moved away from her property and began to dig.

  By the time my father pulled into the driveway, I had blisters on my hands, mud caked to my shoes, and smears of dirt and clay on my face. The hole was easily a square yard in size and a foot and a half deep.

  “What are you doing, Birdie?” he asked as he got out of the car.

  “I’m digging to China,” I said. “Mom won’t let me go outside of the yard, so I decided to see how long it would take me to dig to China.”

  He stood over the hole and surveyed my work, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

  “Ummmm,” he said. “Well, it looks like you’re off to a good start.”

  “I am.” I was surprised he wasn’t angry and decided to up the ante. “By the end of summer I should be halfway there.”

  “Umm hmmmm.” He looked toward the house. “Do you know what we’re having for dinner?”

  I looked at him, both irritated and exasperated.

  “Dad, I’m busy,” I said. “I’m working on something and this might not be the right spot. I’ll probably have to dig in a couple of places to find the right one. There could end up being holes all over the yard.”

  “Well, be careful,” he said and began to walk toward the house. “Don’t fall in.”

  I stood in the hole and watched him jog up the stairs, pull open the door and step inside the house. The door banged closed behind him. Unbelievable! I stared at the closed door. This has to be part of their plan, I thought. But they don’t know who they’re dealing with. This was just the first of many holes. And if that didn’t work, well, then, Natalie and I would figure out a new plan. Between the two of us, we would outsmart our parents at their own game.

  Chapter 7

  I stood in the shadow of the house and watched as the man drove slowly down the street, headlights off, navigating by the light of the full moon. Although his face was obscured by the darkness of the car interior, I could sense his eyes raking the yards and houses, casing the neighborhood. The car itself was long, gray, and silent as it slid past our house. What, or who, was he looking for? I found myself imagining his motives, picturing the contents of his trunk. A knife? Rope?

  The car rolled past with a quiet crunch of grit under tires and I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He was gone. We were safe. I turned and began to walk toward Natalie’s house. I wasn’t sure why I was going there. I just knew I had to talk to her. I wore dark clothes to blend in with the night and felt slightly giddy at my invisibility. In my fist, I clutched a butcher knife I’d taken from the kitchen. It was my protection against people like the man in the car. In some ways, I felt like the predator. I walked quickly and quietly, looking from side to side as I went. One block down, one to go. Natalie wasn’t expecting me, but somehow, I knew she would be up and that she would come outside. There was something I had to talk to her about—something that only she would understand. There was urgency to my step. I wanted to be there already. The pleasure I used to have of sneaking out of the house and moving silently in the night was lost in the knowledge I now had of the dangers that were everywhere. Rather than enjoying the freedom of being outside without anyone knowing, I was jumpy, on edge. I had to get to Natalie’s. I had to talk to her. I was single-minded, which is why I didn’t see him until it was too late.

  He was crouched behind a car parked in Mr. Tucker’s driveway. He was tall and dark and moved quickly and silently. He, too
, had a knife, I realized as he grabbed me and put a gloved hand over my mouth. My body tensed and the butcher knife I had brought for protection dropped uselessly from my hand.

  “Don’t say a word,” he hissed in my ear. “I have a knife and I would think nothing of gutting you like a fish. Do you understand me?” My heart thudded in my head. My chest hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My body ached. My bladder released. “Do you understand me?”

  I nodded.

  “You didn’t think I saw you, did you?” he whispered in my ear. “Oh, I saw you, all right. I’ve been watching you a lot more than just tonight. I’ve been watching you with your friends . . . at school . . . around town. You’ve been playing hide and seek with me, but I knew where you were all along. You broke into my house and saw my special pictures. Well, now I’m gonna’ show you what them pictures mean. We’re gonna have some fun, you and me.”

  It was Don Wan.

  He picked me up, hand still over my mouth, and carried me to his car, which was parked down the street. He was breathing heavily by the time we made it to his car. He fumbled in his jeans pocket for the car keys. He held me pressed against him. His body was hard and unyielding. His breath came in short gasps and I felt him tremble slightly as he located the keys and opened the trunk. Inside I saw the rope and the gray roll of duct tape.

  “Now, I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth so I can get a couple things out of the trunk and you’re gonna promise me that you will not make a peep, okay? Because if you do, I’m gonna knock you out and when you wake up, you won’t like what happens to you. Do you understand?”

  Again, I nodded.

  He slowly removed his hand, watching me carefully to see if I would disobey.

  “That’s a good girl,” he said as he reached into the trunk and felt around for the rope and tape. His eyes never left mine and he smiled as he watched me tremble with fear. “You’re scared, ain’t you? You shouldn’t be. This is gonna be fun. By the end, you’ll be begging me for more.”